Geografie 1978, 83, 246-257
Socio-Economic Character of the Rural Settlements in Czechoslovakia
As early as the 1950, an evergrowing attention has been paid to the studies on the character and on the function of Czechoslovakia's settlements. This attention has been influenced especially by the action - oriented needs of the regional physical planning (town and country planning) and by the efforts devoted to the remodelling of the pattern of settlements in recent time. As late as the early 1970, the research of the pattern of settlements had, however, to stem from data relating to administrative communities only because of the lack of information of the individual geographical settlements. In addition, most authors have as yet unsufficiently distinguished the concepts of the function (role) of the structure of the economy and of the socio-economic character of the settlements. The Population and Housing Census 1970 created the first time the basic statistical pre-requisites necessary for a deeper evaluation of the character of the particular settlements. This paper analyses in the first chapter the terms of the function, of the structure of the economy and of the socioeconomic character of the settlements. The second chapter of the paper pays attention to the simplified classification of the rural settlements of Czechoslovakia with a special regard to the differences existing bettween the Czech and Slovak Socialist Republic. The problem of the rural settlements is very important; there are 20597 such minor settlements in Czechoslovakia. According to the proportions of the resident economically active inhabitants working in the industry and in the agriculture, the rural settlements are grouped into 6 groups (the settlements with an industrial character, with an agricultural character, with an industrially mixed character, with agriculturally mixed cbaracter, with a tertiary character and with a hybrid character). The settlements with an agricultural character form already only the minor part of the total number of the rural settlements (40,1 % in the Czech Republic; 23,7 % in the Slovak Republic). The proportion or the industrial settlements amounts to 16,5 % in the Cz. Rep. and to 13,6 % in the Slovak Rep. The bulk of the rest of rural settlements form the settlements with the mixed and hybrid characters. The third chapter of the paper takes into account also the commuting to work. The rural settlements are cross-tabulated according to the proportion of the economically active population working in the agriculture and according to the share of the resident economically active inhabitants commuting to work out of the domicile. The last chapter deals with proposals relating to the more refined methods of the classification of the rural settlements in connection with the preparation of the Census to be held in the year 1980.
